David McNeill: Why I love Japan even more since the earthquake

David McNeillA week into Japan’s crisis, when many of my spooked friends had
already decamped west, south or abroad, I urged my pregnant partner Nanako to leave
Tokyo for the apparent safety of Kansai. She wasn’t happy and
for good reason: I was staying behind, her parents were in Tokyo and she knew
nobody in Osaka.

Two days before, my sister and boyfriend had cut short a holiday
in Japan and flown to Hong Kong after a painful haranguing from my mother in
Ireland.

Before Nanako and I left for Shinagawa Station there was another
strong earthquake, a report on the radio about potentially catastrophic
radiation from the Fukushima plant and a warning by the Irish Embassy in Tokyo that pregnant women should avoid the capital.

Exhausted and emotional after Nanako’s tearful departure, I
headed for a coffee shop in the station where four perfectly turned-out waitresses
serenaded my entry with a singsong "irrashaimase!” and fussed over my order
with typically attentive service.

“Take your time,” said a beaming young woman as she passed me my
coffee. At which point I started crying.

Admirable ability

I wrote something later that day for The Irish Times, pondering
this admirable and mysterious ability of many Japanese people to function
normally as the scenery collapses around them. How black-suited salarymen stayed at their
posts, housewives calmly queued for water and fuel, and waitresses still acted
as though the most important thing in the world was my ¥280 order.

Car navigation systems still direct visitors to the post office and the local government building, which are no longer there.

Some say that these people are just falling back on routine
because they don’t know any better.

“Robots,” said one of my friends disparagingly, after I told him
how a video store clerk kept calling during the week to remind me to return
an overdue DVD.

But I don’t agree. Those waitresses are human beings with families
who worry about radiation too. I like to think they stay focused because to not
do so is to let down others, and that invites chaos.

Uprooted communities

I traveled north twice to visit refugee centers in Tohoku, and was
often moved by what I saw. In Rikuzen-Takata, the muddy deluge of March 11 has
torn the town from its roots, leaving a gaping wound of smashed cars, pulverized
wooden houses and twisted metal girders.

Car navigation systems still direct visitors to the post office
and the local government building, which are no longer there. But in the
makeshift refugee center, you could clearly see why this community will bounce
back.

Local people in a school gym had organized themselves into
temporary neighborhoods tagged with signs identifying the now destroyed "ku" to
which they belonged -- an infinitely more resilient structure than the flimsy
wooden houses washed into the sea.

Food, water and baths were carefully and seamlessly rationed. Housewives,
teachers and firemen stepped into leadership roles. Older children told younger
children what to do during aftershocks. There were no fights about who got
what.

Outside the town, a hot springs resort had been converted into
another temporary shelter, housing old people and families.

Every day, hundreds of people were bussed in for a bath, a vital
psychological boost. Everyone got 30 minutes, roughly once a fortnight.

Anyone who knows the importance of baths in this country will
appreciate how much endurance it takes for people to restrict themselves to
that meager ration. Yet nobody, not even the people who ran the resort, broke
the rule. “If I did that, it would get around and the system would break down,”
one worker told me.

In it together

Above all, what will stay with me after these communities are rebuilt,
the Fukushima plant encased in a concrete coffin, and the iodine, cesium and
plutonium have stopped seeping from its bowels, is the way Japanese people
carried themselves during this crisis.

I’m thinking now of the smiles I saw around Iwate, of the many old
people and children in the prefecture who shoved food into my hands and told me to keep going.

I think these qualities are social, not genetic,
built up over generations, and possibly stronger in the northeast where life
has traditionally been harsher. But whatever the reason, it works. And I’m
staying.

David McNeill is the Japan/Korea correspondent for "The Chronicle of Higher Education" and also writes for "The Independent" and "Irish Times."